


offer it a soul

by colberts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3834502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colberts/pseuds/colberts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you think,” he starts, the words thick on his tongue, “that we have the right to choose who dies just because we can kill?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	offer it a soul

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky-centric, background relationship w/ Steve, all about Bucky's kill count through the years. inspired largely by the idea that Bucky’s always moved towards the Winter Soldier, and the idea that what he would always struggle with most was not trusting in his own goodness. also Seb Stan’s grunge look from sdcc ‘13. title from "It Will Come Back" by Hozier.

1.

What shocks him the most is the way his hands don’t shake. He waits for the fear to come creeping up through his feet and into his chest, waits for it to spread along his arms and into his fingers. He expects it to vibrate him out of his skin until he’s dead. He’s a target, just like all of his men, and the fear is what’s going to kill him. Kill or be killed, that’s war.

But his hands don’t shake.

It’s just like training, really, which is as horrifying as the smells of the artillery burning up the flesh of men in the field. He blinks sometimes and it’s just like the game he’d played with his sisters where he’d close his eyes and let them run and whoever didn’t hide fast enough lost. Except in the middle of war, the ones who should’ve been hiding ended up wounded on the ground or completely blown to bits. Ashes, ashes, they all fell down.

The worry sits at the base of his spine and stiffens his neck, rings in his ears like the sounds of artillery exploding just yards away. It’s just one small noise in a sea of chaos that washes over him, but he tunes it out just like he’d been taught and squeezes the trigger. He blinks as his rifle goes off, just a split second that saves him from seeing the impact, but he watches as the man crumples where he’d stood, about to gun down one of Bucky’s men. He was no more than a paper target. Bullseye.

The breath flies out of him and he allows himself one moment of reflection, one moment to mentally tally his first kill, and he rests his cheek against the wood of his rifle and sends up the first prayer he’s said in months asking for the forgiveness he’ll need if he can kill and not feel one single thing.

127.

He’s used to the heat. His hair sticks to his cheek thanks to the sweat beading his temple and he can feel his tanktop plastered to his spine underneath his long-sleeved shirt. He sees the way people glance at him over their sunglasses, assessing him, and that’s all part of the challenge. _Let them look_ , Steve’s voice says in his head. _They’ll forget you by the corner and be on to the next fashion offense._

It’s been weeks since he’s seen Steve Rogers, and he’s due for another ambush.

He catches a glimpse of baseball cap and biceps in the reflection of sunglasses displayed on the sidewalk for tourists, who are his best friends when he needs cover. He sheds his jacket and sidesteps into a crowded coffee shop. He ties his hair up as he ducks between an arguing couple to make his way into the bookstore that’s attached. He pushes his way out the doors and heads the opposite direction, away from sunglasses and sorrowful eyes. He’s nearly five blocks away before someone drops into step beside him.

Steve’s got his hands in his pockets and he stays several inches away to avoid accidentally bumping their shoulders together.

“Right on time,” he mutters. The corner of Steve’s mouth quirks up as he dodges a group of people that cut between them. Steve’s got his hat pulled low over his eyes and a loose plaid shirt that hides a lot of his bulk, which he hadn’t been wearing before.

He pulls his jacket back on and slips his gloved hand into the pocket. He shakes his hair loose and lets it fall between them, shielding his eyes from Steve’s view.

“There are jobs, if you want them.” Steve always starts with the offers, like that’s neutral ground.

“Think I’ve done plenty,” he answers with a bark of a laugh that catches on his teeth.

“Nothing dirty. Mostly catch, interrogate, release. Mostly the stuff you’ve been doing anyway.”

“Accept for where I’ve got someone up my ass again.” He turns to look at Steve then, and Steve just shrugs. They’ve had this conversation so many times that he feels like he’s reading from a script.

“It’s all a mess right now. Most of us are doing our own work and combining useful information. The chain of command is kind of fucked.”

“I’ve got enough of that going on without adding their shit to my pile.”

“Fair enough.”

They walk another couple blocks before he turns them away from the direction of where he’s living and makes for the other side of the neighborhood. He’s sure Steve knows where he’s staying but there’s no need to make an invitation out of it.

“Look,” Steve says, stopping outside the mouth of an alley he’d planned to use as his escape route. “You don’t have to deal with me. You wouldn’t be working with me, or you wouldn’t have to if you didn’t want to, anyway. But you’ve been sending in tips for months now and you could be doing it officially instead of killing yourself trying to stay in the shadows.”

“That’s the way it’s going to be either way,” he says with a scowl. He sees all the things Steve Rogers is in the way he holds himself hunched and small like he's still not used to being huge and he'll never understand why Steve treats him like a hero when he's the opposite of that. Steve knows about his tips, but he doesn’t know about the pile of bodies that he’s stacked, one piece of scum at a time since he’d figured out the chain of command.

“I know.” Steve rubs his forehead. “I mean, you don’t have to worry about them being after you. We did a pretty good job wiping all the evidence and connections to who you are and there are more pressing matters. Like that big security failure.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can think of plenty of others who want to get their hands on me. Not interested,” he says, sidestepping Steve and heading for the fence to hop halfway down the alley.

"You’re already doing the job I’m offering," Steve says, his voice echoing between the buildings. "I knew you wouldn’t sit on your hands. But we have resources that can help."

He hears what else Steve is trying to say and it makes his stomach churn. He isn’t the man that Rogers misses.

"I'm going, Rogers." He grips the chain-link fence in his left hand, metal on metal. He doesn’t look back at Steve. "It was always your fight and it always will be. Go fight it and stop worrying about me."

“Buck,” Steve starts, but he’s already vaulting over the fence.

Two nights later, he strangles the guy he catches tailing Steve after a garbled “Hail Hydra.”

21.

He takes out three of Hydra’s guards before they can subdue him. One’s got his favorite knife stuck in his thigh, one’s shot through the belly, and one’s got a dislocated shoulder and lies on the grimy floor, out cold and hopefully concussed.

Guards swarm the POW cages, weapons held high and mouths open, spewing their heavy, gurgling language. He’s pretty sure German’s weight comes straight from hell. The guards restraining him scream in his ear, gesturing with their free hands towards the rest of the men in his cage, the men he’s been with since his boots hit enemy soil.

They drag him off away from the cages and he knows he’s done for, just like his men, but the fire burns in him. He directs his focus and waits for the weak moment; he’s seen them in action and knows most of the lackies are brute strength with no finesse. It’s thirty seconds later when they give him his chance and before they can restrain him again, he’s slit one’s throat with the guard’s own knife and broken the other’s nose with the hilt of it. He’s barely aware of his surroundings, but his heart pumps blood and fury through him so fast and thick that he’s pinned a third guard to the ground with his knees and the blade of the knife pressed under his chin.

“What’s it you say before you die? Something about cutting off your head?”

The blood stains his hands and that’s the last thing he remembers before a needle is jammed into his neck and he’s lost to pain.

128.

The police radio he swiped is on the floor next to his bed. It crackles to life at 3:07 am on a Tuesday morning and all he hears is “Captain America” before he’s swinging his legs out of his bedroom window. He’s got three pistols strapped to him and a knife in his boot and the extra clips are snapped to his belt. He pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head and scales the building until he’s running across the roof and heading towards the sirens.

He skids to a halt at the ledge of a three-story townhouse and looks down to find Steve and the Widow back to back surrounded by cops that look like they’re in full riot gear. Not cops, then, but ballsy Hydra agents. The leader with a megaphone is shouting about surrendering and breaking some new laws about vigilantes and the others all have guns drawn and fingers on triggers.

What kind of morons circle up and point their guns at the center?

He remembers enough about Steve Rogers to know that whatever is about to go down is going to be the hard way.

Widow nods, barely visible but clearly for Steve, and the madness ensues. Shots ring out and he grabs two of his pistols and aims, watching as Steve’s shield cuts through half of them and Widow garrotes two of them at once. Three of the men crumple after friendly fire rips through them and the megaphone bounces into the gutter.

He’s ready to run again, sure that they’ve got it handled, when movement behind a nearby vehicle catches his eye. Steve’s got his back turned, dealing with one of the fighters, and the flash of the scope is his only clue of what’s going to happen. He aims and fires without taking a breath and the man disappears behind the car, rifle and all. He doesn’t get back up.

It takes him a moment to breathe again, and it’s long enough that he and Widow lock eyes before he can drop down behind the ledge of the roof. He drops his guns and they clatter when they hit the concrete. His chest feels tight, and there’s very little air getting to his lungs.

He hasn’t had to fire a gun since his bullets ripped through Steve.

He knows he has no time to panic, not on the roof where Steve and the Widow will both be looking. He grabs his guns and bolts, vaulting over the edge and swinging himself down to the ground to run through the alleys. He zigzags his way across town and climbs back up to the rooftops until he’s got an aerial view of his place. He’s only half certain Steve won’t come looking for him, but they’ve got a mess to deal with and he’s just a shadow.

He slumps against brick and unzips his sweatshirt because it feels too tight around him. How Rogers has managed to stay alive without him for so long is beyond him.

88.

“Steve!”

Dugan’s behind him, his fist wrapped in the wool of his coat and he can’t get free to get to Steve who’s just disappeared in a cloud of smoke with several Hydra agents.

“Not now, get up there!” Dugan shouts, forcing him westward toward a bombed out barn. He knows he has to get up, get high to see the formation and take out anyone in the way, but he’s lost Steve in the sea of the ambush and he’s torn between running in after him to murder every sack of shit he comes across and doing his job as the eyes of his team.

“Jim!” He yells over his shoulder as he sprints to the barn. “Morita! Take Jones and clear a path for Dugan!” They take off towards the spearhead of the ambush with their Hydra weapons as he makes his way up the rickety stairs to the barn’s attic. He lies down on the planks and positions himself so he can look out over the field. He catches a glimpse of red as he looks through the scope of his rifle. Steve’s in the middle, surrounded by at least eight guys.

“Barnes, a little help!” Falsworth calls from the ground near the barn where Dernier’s rigging up the explosives they may need for their get-away. He abandons Steve and picks off three agents headed towards the barn and gets one in the leg just as Jones turns and vaporizes him.

When the path is a little clearer for the rest of the team, he shifts toward the open field to find Steve. Steve’s swarmed by a whole gang of soldiers and they’re all too close for him to pick off without risking shooting Steve.

“Get a fucking move on!” he shouts into the chaos. “Northeast, quarter mile to Rogers!” Steve’s got one arm pinned to his side, his shield is nowhere to be seen, and the best he’s got is his elbow fracturing the jaws of every man that gets just too close.

He swings his rifle back to where Dugan and the rest are trying to plow their way to Steve, but they’re making little headway. One, two, three, four men drop with bullets through their heads but he has to reload between each and he’s running low. He turns back to Steve again and breathes in, sucking in the burnt air and saying a silent prayer to a God he barely believes in.

He aims and waits, sees Steve going for one behind him and picks off one to the left as Steve bends right. He watches Steve flinch away from the sound and puts a second down as Steve doubles over on instinct. Steve propels himself forward and takes out a guy in front and one more to the right keels over with a bullet to the head.

He takes a moment to pull his eye away from the scope to see where the rest of the team is, and they’re halfway through the front lines. He works the bolt and takes aim again, catching the arm of an agent who sprints towards Steve to take him down while Steve staggers to his feet. Steve uses the momentum of him to grab and toss him as the agent’s arm hits the ground. They don’t have time to be disgusted by war, but they’ll all dream about it.

That’s when he sees the guy behind Steve, pistol raised and ready to pull. Steve’s already turning toward him, putting himself between the barrel of the rifle and Hydra’s pistol. He barely takes in a breath before he fires, his crosshairs on the guy’s hip where he can see it under Steve’s right arm.

The guy goes down, but so does Steve, clutching his side where the bullet grazed by and flew through the Hydra agent.

“Get to Rogers!” He points, rifle abandoned, and scrambles to get himself up and out of the barn. He’s been messed with, altered, strengthened in ways he never asked for, and he hits the ground heavily but unharmed when he drops out of the attic window. “Rogers is hit, get to Rogers!”

He slings his rifle over his shoulder and fishes out the pistol strapped to his side and an extra clip. The men he runs past move in slow motion, and he will remember later the way every bullet he fires pushes them back towards the ground. The force of life being knocked out of them weighs his boots down as he runs; he feels it trying to grip him like vines to root him to the spot, but Steve is wounded and still surrounded and shield-less and he has to get there.

He smashes the face of an agent who catches him mid-reload and shoots him in the leg for good measure once his gun’s loaded. He can see Steve half crouched on the ground, one knee in the mud and one arm wrapped around his middle. His other hand holds a pistol that he fires twice, his face twisted in pain. Dugan gets to him first, smashing his way through the remaining Hydra agents.

He shoves Dugan out of the way and lands hard on his knees next to Steve.

“Thanks, pal,” Steve says, dropping his weapon. “Thought I was done for.” She smiles through a grimace, so trusting it’s sickening.

All he can do is look at the blood seeping between Steve’s fingers. The words stick in his throat. Not for the nameless enemies he’s killed, double digits at least all dead shot through with his bullets, but for the life he almost took trying to save it.

The weight of what he can do, what he’s capable of hits him like a train. Steve reaches out, clutching his shoulder with a bloodied hand.

“I’ll be fine,” Steve says, “just grazed the side. It’s happened before.”

But it hasn’t. It’s never been his bullet. It’s never been his finger on the trigger and it’s never been his decision.

129.

He pulls the trigger after two breaths and doesn’t feel a thing when his bullet hits its mark. He waits for the feeling to come, waits for his throat to close up and his hands to shake but he remains crouched and steady. He withdraws his gun and closes the window when he’s sure all backs are turned towards him. By the time witnesses turn their eyes to the building, he’ll be long gone.

He made the choice, this time, and that’s the difference. Can you reason away someone’s life? He had. The world is undoubtedly a better place without the man. His rap sheet in Hydra’s files was long enough that even Hydra worried about keeping him on their payroll. He’d killed as much as the Winter Soldier had, although he’s learned that all lives are not considered equal. He’d enabled the killing of even more. There was enough proof that no jury would convict him for ending his life.

But he’d made the choice. There was no life-threatening situation. Steve Rogers didn’t need saving. He’d killed, just like the Winter Soldier, but there had been a conscious choice to do so. He could’ve risked himself to extract the man, could’ve handed him over to the justice system or to remnants of SHIELD, could’ve risked that they would let him back on the street or use his skills while turning a blind eye to his past.

That man and him? Not so different. He’d drawn first, is all, and he got to live.

His boots sound loud against the sidewalk as he calmly makes his way through the shadows and towards the bridge back into the city. He listens to his heart thump in his ears and his feet pound the pavement and he thinks about the text messages waiting for him on his phone that all had come from Steve.

Before he knows it, he standing outside Steve’s apartment building with his broken-down rifle in a backpack and he finds his finger on the buzzer before he can stop himself.

“Hello?” he hears after several long moments.

“It’s me.” There’s a pause before the lock on the door clicks and he enters the building.

When he’s in Steve’s apartment, standing in his kitchen with his gun and his knives and the heaviness of the world, he blinks in the light and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“It’s 3 am.” Steve points out gently, cradling a mug of tea as he leans against his kitchen sink.

“Do you think,” he starts, the words thick on his tongue, “that we have the right to choose who dies just because we can kill?”

To Steve’s credit, he doesn’t seem startled by the question.

“Sometimes it’s the way it goes,” he says slowly, watching him carefully.

“But why us? We aren’t judge or jury. They don’t call us murderers, but we have too much power to be the law. Who decided we have the right?”

“These people we’re dealing with, Hydra, they’re,” Steve twists his mouth, searching for words, “it’s still a war, with them.”

“It’s not a war,” he starts to protest, but Steve shakes his head.

“Yes, it is. Look at everything they’ve done. They tried to shape the history of the world.” With you goes almost unheard. “They nearly wiped out millions in minutes.”

He avoids Steve’s gaze, too broken still to talk about anything that happened before he’d gotten some of himself back.

“I guess what I’m sayin’ is, how’d we get here with all this power?”

Steve sets his mug down on the counter and moves closer, so that only the table is between them. He rests his hands on a chair, fingers flexed around the back of it like it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

Steve looks every bit of his 95 years when he turns his eyes upward. He feels the weight of Steve’s gaze and he feels all those weeks he spent defrosted and he feels every moment of the war he was called upon to fight. They have both been lost in time but they are here, now, presently old and young and weary, and they both have ended lives upon lives for good that’s hard to find in the world despite their best efforts.

“You said this was my fight,” Steve says quietly, “but this, today, none of this is my fight. I can’t see the difference between us and them sometimes, but I sometimes pull the trigger anyway.”

“Why?”

“I’m angry,” Steve says. “I’m angry enough that I’ll kill when I have to. But we both make the choice not to more often than we pull that trigger. And I believe we’re on the right side.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe that’s enough.”

He’s not so sure, but he’ll follow Steve’s lead.

100.

He’s standing in a train car with Steve’s shield in one hand when the thought occurs to him that he wishes he had a knife for the guy dumb enough to bring Steve to his knees. He’s felt the desire to kill before, sure, and he’s felt it plenty of times trying to protect Steve, but the rage in him is white hot and for the first time he wishes that Steve wasn’t there to see it.

The thought distracts him, blinds him for just half of a second too long, and before he can gather any more thoughts, he’s hanging by a thread with Steve above him, reaching just a bit too short.

He falls, and the air punches the scream out of him, and he thinks for only a moment that he finally met the punishment fit for his crimes.

129.

He feels a little ridiculous with a mask on. He’s used to the utility of a good suit with enough hiding places to carry a decent arsenal, but the mask makes him feel like a kid playing hero. Almost a year after breaking free of Hydra's brainwashing and a few weeks after his last psych evaluation clears him, he decides it's time to try it Steve's way or risk losing what's left of James Barnes completely in all of his anonymous vigilantism.

He’d spent so much time indulging his sense of revenge that he forgot what it felt like to do good for the sake of his humanity. Accountability eases his mind, at least. But the violence is in him, and he needs somewhere to direct it.

He ends up in the hotel room of the target, and he feels the hate bubble up into his throat. The target’s asleep, oblivious and alone. He could pull the trigger no problem, slide his knife right into the guy and be out the window before he took his last breath, but he pauses.

He’s a person. He’s not an asset or a weapon for one side or another. He’s done good and he’s done bad, and he’s learned from it all. He’s followed Steve Rogers around and listened to him go on enough to know that it’s not just good and evil, but everything in between. Sometimes good people make hard choices, bad choices, but they are still good people when they keep trying to make the right ones. It’s idealistic, but he tries to hold on to that.

He tranqs and cuffs the guy and leaves him in a pile outside the police station with a note from Cap’s sidekick. The target used up his three strikes working on the Winter Soldier project, but maybe there’s some good left yet.

He climbs into bed next to Steve and he feels calm.

0.

“Hold ‘em out like this,” he says to the kid with the bloody nose, demonstrating the boxing stance his father’d taught him years ago. He’d come across a shrimp of a kid in the alley; he barely makes it up to most boys’ shoulders at their age. He’s new and he’s the target with his stick-thin frame and the wheeze they all hear under the teacher’s lessons.

“I’m fine,” the kid says, bumping their elbows together as he shoves past.

“Sure.”

The kid looks back at him, one eye already swelling and blue over his delicate cheekbone. His jaw is set, fists still clenched.

“What do you care?” He spits blood and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Just tryin’ to help, pal. Those lugs think it makes ‘em tough, beating on kids five to one.” He shrugs, looks away, picks at his suspender nervously. He hasn’t tried to make friends with anybody in so long, but the way this kid went into the fight had him impressed. “Just tryin’ to even the odds.”

“Most wouldn’t bother.” He scuffs one toe of his ratty shoe in the dirt and looks down, blood still running from his nose.

“‘Cause it’s the right thing to do, and they’d rather watch their own hides.”

The kid meets his eyes and he feels naked under the scrutiny. Talk like that gets kids like him beat up, too.

Ratty shoes slide forward and a small hand extends.

“I’m Steve.”

“Bucky.”

With bloodied knuckles, they shake hands.

**Author's Note:**

> * meant to focus on Bucky not trusting the goodness inside of him after coming out of what Hydra did to him, and show how he was always carrying the skills of the Soldier, but lacked the choice when Hydra had him  
> * innate goodness aside, I like to think that Bucky had an influence on Steve (shown at the end)  
> * I think it's fascinating thinking about how the only difference between hero and villain is the belief that drives them to act the way that they do


End file.
